After the Penalty, What Do You Do for Links?

From February 2005 through May 2005 Google went through what I have sometimes called the Google Awful Update
. Their search results were characterized by many URL-only listings and they often displayed 2-year-old data in place of contemporary information that their crawlers should have been picking up. Danny Sullivan seemed unaware of the issue at the time when I mentioned it to him but I confirmed it was happening to many Websites. The only way you could improve your Google performance at the time (if your site was affected by the Awful Update) was to publish new content, which could not be replaced by 2-year-old data and was not shown in URL-only format.
What I took away from that experience was that “Google remembers everything”. I have been telling people that Google remembers everything for years.
At the SMX Advanced 2007 conference in Seattle, during the “You-and-A” session with Matt Cutts, this memory thing came up again with an example where Matt mentioned if you own 200 spammy sites your 201st site may be flagged for review. This was not the first time the issue had come up. At an earlier conference during a Website review session someone asked Matt why his Website was having issues. Matt looked up the site on his laptop (which he shielded from public view) and said, “I see you have a lot of other Websites that have been flagged for spam.” The audience was stunned by the depth and detail of Google’s knowledge about the Website owner
.
Google has a long memory. Their data centers are large not just because the Web is growing, but also because they are trying to hang on to as much data as possible. “Google remembers everything” is not just a trite saying.
I noticed a forum discussion a few weeks ago (and this is most likely characteristic of such discussions through the past year to year-and-a-half) where someone said, “I was hit by Penguin and had to clean up a lot of bad links. But my rankings won’t come back.”
If you weren’t hit by Penguin then you had a manual action against you for “unnatural links”. It’s the same story just with different details.
At the end of November Barry Schwartz highlighted a discussion in the Google Webmaster forums, noting that Google says you may need to earn their trust again after having engaged in serious violations of their guidelines.
When you clean up a toxic backlink profile, your expectations should be low. It’s a rare website (in my opinion) that will quickly earn back a lot of Google traffic. There are two reasons why I say this. First, if you were counting on links to boost your rankings in Google before, all that link value is gone forever. The foundation on which you built your search success rotted out from under you and simply getting the penalty lifted or recovering from the Penguin downgrade isn’t sufficient to restore your once glorious listing positions.
Second, Google has a long memory. They remember everything.
If you were in doubt before about whether you were out of the deep, dark valley, you should now understand that it isn’t that simple. Google trusted you to abide by their guidelines and you found all sorts of ways to get around those guidelines. Teehee! You were so clever. It worked for years.
But now that the drugs have worn off and you cannot get another quick fix you’re feeling the dreary after effects and they are not pleasant.
The Internet being what it is, those who misled you with their bad SEO advice are already pretending they never said those awful things. It’s your
fault you got caught. They’re now content marketers and advocates of natural linking, whatever that may be.
Meanwhile, you’re stuck in the dog house and you want to know when and how you can get out.
So, the hard answer you don’t need to hear is that you probably need links. Your Website has lost a lot of link value.
But needing links doesn’t excuse you from future excess. You’re still in the embarrassing position of being one of the people that Google is watching. You can’t just rush out and do it all over again.

So if you’re thinking of guest posting campaigns and infographics, you really need to stop and consider just how much worse it will be for you the next time you get caught.
Earning links when you have little to no Web visibility is not easy. If you have money for advertising and you can make a profit from using Adwords or Bing’s AdCenter, you should do so. Don’t fly off the deep end and blame Google for what you did to yourself. Don’t dwell on conspiracy theories about Google wanting more people to purchase ads. Google didn’t hold a gun to your head and tell you to get thousands of spammy links. You made that decision yourself, even if at the time you didn’t understand the risks that were involved.
Through the years many people have disagreed with the SEO practices I have advocated. People who didn’t want to hear about the long, slow path to search success went looking for quick fixes and they found them on plenty of popular Websites. You can still find supportive points of view on the Web today.
Content marketing is your greasy road to salvation.
Search engine optimization is now digital marketing.
It’s all bullshit but if you just want feelgood advice it’s there, waiting for you, ready to envelope you in its arms.
If you start over with a new Website some of that advice may help you quickly build up a lot of search traffic. Then again, Google may know who is behind the new site. If you get into trouble again starting a third site may not be so easy.
Just because you read a happy little case study on a popular SEO Website doesn’t mean it’s showing you the way out of the dog house. Search engine optimization was never simple or easy. There is always a price to pay.
Now you’re in the position of having to choose between following all the gurus who are changing horses in the middle of the stream or trying to find a new way.
For my part, I am preaching and practicing the same principles I was in 1999. I can place manipulative links along with the best of manipulative linkers. But I prefer creating content that people are interested in. It just works better, always has, and probably always will.
For those of you who have been to the penalty box and are struggling now that you’re out, creating content that people are interested in may be your only path to long-term success at this point. And it’s a pretty simple path to follow.
If you build it and they do NOT come, then it’s really NOT that interesting. I know for a fact that truly interesting content gets noticed regardless of where you publish it.
You just have to be consistent, not angry.
As for the links you need, if you build truly interesting content, someone will link to it.
Don’t be so quick to get your hands dirty again. The dirt may not wash off so quickly the next time.
Google has a long memory. They forget nothing. You can probably say the same about Bing.


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